ful, as sentinels, to discover the secret wiles and open attacks of this capricious goddess, before they reach us. Where she falls upon us unexpected it is hard to resist: but those who wait for her, will repel her with ease. The sudden invasion of an enemy overthrows such as are not on their guard; but they who foresee the war, and prepare themselves for it before it breaks out, stand, without difficulty, the first and the fiercest onset. I learned this important lesson long ago, and never trusted to fortune even while she seemed to be at peace with me. The riches, the honours, the reputation, and all the advantages which her treacherous indulgence poured upon me, I placed so, that she might snatch them away without giving me any disturbance. I kept a great interval between me and them. She took them, but she could not tear them from me. No man suffers by bad fortune, but he who has been deceived by good. If we grow fond of her gifts, fancy that they belong to us, and are perpetually to remain with us, if we lean upon them, and expect to be considered for them; we shall sink into all the bitterness of grief, as soon as these false and transitory benefits pass away, as soon as our vain and childish minds, unfraught with solid pleasures, become destitute even of those which are imaginary. But, if we do not suffer ourselves to be transported by prosperity, neither shall we be reduced by adversity. Our souls will be of proof against the dangers of both these states: and having explored our strength, we shall be sure of it; for in the midst of felicity, we shall have tried how we can bear misfortune.

Reflections upon Exile.

P. 154, 1. 24. Indifferency. Here used in the sense of" impartiality" or "freedom from bias," not "lack of interest."

these grand innovators have been indebted for their number of disciples. Because it is plain, that several of the chief among them, both ancient and modern, were usually mistaken by their adversaries, and indeed by all, except their own followers, to have been persons crazed, or out of their wits; having generally proceeded, in the common course of their words and actions, by a method very different from the vulgar dictates of unrefined reason; agreeing for the most part in their several models, with their present undoubted successors in the academy of modern Bedlam; whose merits and principles I shall farther examine in due place. Of this kind were Epicurus, Diogenes, Apollonius, Lucretius, Paracelsus, Des Cartes, and others; who, if they were now in the world, tied fast, and separate from their followers, would, in this our undistinguishing age, incur manifest danger of phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw. For what man, in the natural state or course of thinking, did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason. Epicurus modestly hoped, that, one time or other, a certain fortuitous concourse of all men's opinions, after perpetual justlings, the sharp with the smooth, the light and the heavy, the round and the square, would, by certain clinamina, unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of all things. Cartesius reckoned to see, before he died, the sentiments of all philosophers, like so many lesser stars in his romantic system, wrapped and drawn within his own vortex. Now, I would gladly be informed, how it is possible to account for such imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon of vapours, ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions, for which the narrowness of our mother-tongue has not yet assigned any other name beside that of madness or phrensy. Let us therefore now conjecture how it comes to pass, that none of these great prescribers do ever fail providing themselves and their notions with a number of implicit disciples. And, I think, the reason is easy to be assigned: for there is a peculiar string in the harmony of

We are now therefore to look upon Cicero in a different light, in order to form a just idea of his character: to consider him, not as an ambitious courtier, applying all his thoughts and pains to his own advancement; but as a great magistrate and statesman, administering the affairs and directing the councils of a mighty empire. And, according to the accounts of all the ancient writers, Rome never stood in greater need of the skill and vigilance of an able consul than in this very year. For besides the traitorous cabals and conspiracies of those who were attempting to subvert the whole Republic, the new tribunes were also labouring to disturb the present quiet of it: some of them were publishing laws to abolish everything that remained of Sylla's establishment, and to restore the sons of the proscribed to their estates and honours; others to reverse the punishment of P. Sylla and Autronius, condemned for bribery, and replace them in the senate : some were for expunging all debts, and others for dividing the lands of the public to the poorer citizens: so that, as Cicero declared, both to the senate and the people, the Republic was delivered into his hands full of terrors and alarms; distracted by pestilent laws and seditious haranguers; endangered, not by foreign wars, but intestine evils, and the traitorous designs of profligate citizens; and that there was no mischief incident to a state which the honest had not cause to apprehend, the wicked to expect.

What gave the greater spirit to the authors of these attempts, was Antonius's advancement to the consulship: they knew him to be of the same principles, and embarked in the same designs with themselves, which, by his authority, they now hoped to carry into effect. Cicero was aware of this; and foresaw the mischief of a colleague equal to him in power, yet opposite in views, and prepared to frustrate all his endeavours for the public service; so that his first care, after their election, was to gain the confidence of Antonius, and to draw him from his old engagements to the interests of the Republic; being convinced that all the success of his administration depended upon it. He began therefore to tempt him by a kind of argument, which seldom fails of its effect with men of his character, the offer of power to his ambition, and of money to his pleasures: with these baits he

WHE

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

Richard Steele was born at Dublin in 1671(?) He entered Merton College, Oxford, but went into the army. In 1709 he founded with the Tatler an unrivalled series of periodicals. Despite many gifts of fortune, he was always in difficulties till his death, near Carmarthen, in 1729. He ranks first among English humourists for geniality without boisterousness, and sentiment without gush.

SARCASMS ON MARRIAGE.

HEN I consider the false impressions which are received by the generality of the world, I am troubled at none more than a certain levity of thought, which many young women of quality have entertained, to the hazard of their characters, and the certain misfortune of their lives. The first of the following letters may best represent the faults I would now point at, and the answer to it, the temper of mind in a contrary cha

racter.

"My dear Harriot,

"If thou art she, but oh! how fallen, how changed, what an apostate! how lost to all that is gay and agreeable! To be married I find is to be buried alive; I cannot conceive it more dismal to be shut up in a vault to converse with the shades of my ancestors, than to be carried down to an old manor-house in the country, and confined to the conversation of a sober husband, and an awkward chambermaid. For variety I suppose you may entertain yourself with madam in her grogram gown, the spouse of your parish vicar, who has by this time, I am sure,

GEORGE BERKELEY.

George Berkeley, the greatest master of English philosophical style and perhaps the greatest of English metaphysicians, was born "in the county of Kilkenny" in 1684. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he became chaplain to Peterborough, sojourned in America as a missionary and teacher, was made Bishop of Cloyne, and died at Oxford in 1753.

BUT

MATTER.

OUT let us examine a little the received opinion.—It is said extension is a mode or accident of Matter, and that Matter is the substratum that supports it. Now I desire that you would explain to me what is meant by Matter's supporting extension. Say you, I have no idea of Matter and therefore cannot explain it. I answer, though you have no positive, yet, if you have any meaning at all, you must at least have a relative idea of Matter; though you know not what it is, yet you must be supposed to know what relation it bears to accidents, and what is meant by its supporting them. It is evident "support" cannot here be taken in its usual or literal sense-as when we say that pillars support a building; in what sense therefore must it be taken?

If we inquire into what the most accurate philosophers declare themselves to mean by material substance, we shall find them acknowledge they have no other meaning annexed to those sounds but the idea of Being in general, together with the relative notion of its supporting accidents. The general idea of Being appeareth to me the most abstract and incomprehensible of all other; and as for its supporting accidents, this, as we have